Forks Was Not What I Expected
by annabellefleur
Summary: What would happen if Bella Swan came to Forks as a half witch-half vampire, and not only as 641 years old but the most powerful vampire ever to exist? Will Bella break her number one rule to follow her heart? What if that meant her death?
1. Chapter 1

Twice an Abomination:

"Have you ever watched your parents die, in front of your face then have sit back and be expected not do anything about it." Frankly I was more concerned with how controlled my tone of voice was because honestly, I was livid, in a fury, all that red-hot rings of hell fire nonsense. A girl tells one lie and wham-bam the town screams _your pants are on fire man_. Not like they wanted the truth after-all, the truth as I see it is rather counter-productive. Not to mention mundanes do have a tendency to ignore blatant things when regarding the supernatural, how they can't see what is in front of their faces I'll never know.

"Please Bells get a grip, why must you continue with these lies." Kristine's voice was like the dripping sweet orange honey you'd spend ten dollars at a farmers market for. Ever met _those_ sorts of people, too tan to be in the sun too long without having contracted melanoma, too lovely to not be bitter that you weigh five pounds less that her. Normal people tend to loss it around these people and then somehow get blamed for the entire alteration. Given this vast knowledge of mine, you'd have thought I would have walked slowly away. That is however, not what I regrettably did.

"You know, Kristine I have seen more than you can possibly imagine." Octave's of vocal cords rose, crowds swarmed like bees to Kristine's honey and my 'cool' was effectively lost.

"Really like all of Colorado, wow I think we all have seen that." The woman had whiter teeth than my skin, it was unnatural, how much time did she time in her dentists chair anyway?" So rather harmlessly – I thought – nudged into her mind and simply suggested that should she ever be asked she ought to tell everyone the truth about how she lost all that weight last summer when she swore she was braiding orphan hair in Chicago while training for the marathon on her spare time.

"I imagine you have seen quite a few more places than I have Kristie, you know what with you summer in that Chicago orphanage. Right?" She blanched, her throat swallowed heart pulsed below the skin of her cartulary artery.

"Actually," Her voice went light and as taunt as a drawn bow with eyes wide she prattled on about a "surgical procedure" that raised her self-esteem, when the rather extensive monologue was then Kristie flushed bright like the tomato soup she poured into Lizzie Kramer's locker four weeks ago. "Well at lest I'd save my parents if they were dying, tell me do you wish you were dead because I would, if I had done _nothing_."

This time the nudge wasn't so much of a nudge as a penetration; my brief quirk of smile vanished with her last word and so did hers. When I complied her this time, it was less of a confession and more of an infiltration. Kristie would feel the heat first in her fingers, I always start there and work up, they buckle quicker that way. The fire spread like a spiders webs crawling through her system like a CNS stimulant. She screamed my face ever passive turned from her as her knees sunk into the grass. The crowd looked between my slowly retreating form and the crying bundle of Kristie who to them seemed to be under-attack from an invisible assailant, people mumbled to call 911, others to call an asylum and some for the principle.

For a moment a contemplated leaving her there, writhing in a consuming fire, inescapable, her personal purgatory to pay the penance of her wrongdoings. But I was the farthest thing on the earth from God so my touch retreated from its presence in her mind and with it went the compulsion.

"People oughtn't talk of what they do not understand Kristine." Sometimes, no not sometimes all the time I wish I never had been turned into a vampire. But I just kept that to myself as one of my many secrets bequeathed onto my heart.

She looked at me in horror and slowly stood; when I tried to help her she screamed bloody murder. "No, don't touch me!" It was killer on the eardrums, and then she ran away crying and felt like very soon I would follow the suit if the echo did not stop.

_Ironic, isn't how you thought yourself high enough to dole out penance and now find yourself paying it. _And of course the empathy would set it, record timing with the guilt, bravo.

My mind stretched out its feather touch to the crowd, groping itself way to Kristie. Nudging into their mind I implied that they ought not remember that a girl like Isabella Swan ever existed. The lucky bastards. Easy to forget when you've had to memories stolen, what I'd give for someone the come take some of mine. You know you would think you would forget at least some of the people you killed or tortured but no there all there stuck together like rose-petals in my head. Ever a reminder of my twice abomination.

I walked behind the local grocery store we were standing in front of during this entire altercation and slowly began pulling away at my condensed solid form until every part of me dissolved I often refer to this little gift as 'blinking' because it happens so fast not many see it happen unless your looking for it. One moment you're here than you're there, simple. Their had been another who could 'blink' like me, apparently the talent is extremely rare in vampires and requires a certain skill for skillfully managing to move quickly, silently, and startle people as a human. However the Volturi don't take kindly to excess displays of power, he had to be dealt with.

Once I was inside my house I changed clothes, well I imagined my old sweatpants and a V-neck shirt to on me and my other clothes to be in the hamper and then it happened. 641 years old and still a girl can't handle another mean girl without resorting to supernatural means. Its nauseating, not the action, the reaction. I was going to have to move again, I absolutely despised moving, the whole box thing and prospect of "packing", I never understood it. Who needs more than a duffle bag?

"I'm so stupid." My hand came to my forehead involuntarily. Great Bella just great, now you'll have a headache while blinking this stuff across the world. I breathed in, two calming breathes even though I didn't need air I enjoyed its taste, very soothing. I sighed, went to the map. _Okay Bells where do we go from here…_

Nothing ever happens in small towns. Like anybody in Washington lives in a place called Forks because the house hasn't been in their family for generations. I reached for my laptop, researched Forks to look for compact normalcy in the middle of a wilderness. I rarely ever bought a house, mostly because it's a nuisance I would just have to go through the trouble of credit, escrogrow, and then selling it. So I pick a spot, think of the house I wish for and in its dead center to its equinox I bury thyme, rosemary, lavender and a damp mustard seed. Separate from that are the dried elderberries, placed in the five points of the start for protection, for when dried elderberries are worse than hemlock root.

I thought of Forks, a clearing in a forest nobody would ever think to hike near then pulled from my patchwork shoulder bag the thyme, rosemary, lavender, and mustard seed along with my small gardening shovel. My lips move as I dig four inches wide and eight inches down, old Latin flows freely even though I haven't used it in months. I move to the five points and elderberries once the mustard seed is fully buried and blessed. Than I picture it the big framed house, roman in its atrium, solid walls, archways, a patio off the second story loft and Greek in its Corinthian columns. The walls are cement; made to look like a yellowed masons stone, gather at the two up-stairs arch windows. The house is regular and spectacular, not what you'd expect to find in the middle of a forest.

Stepping through the vertical paneled wooden door reminds me of Rome, I feel the solid walls, soft and already cold from the air "Ignis." My voice echoes through the indented columned atrium the fire place lights to my left and I sink crossed-legged onto the wooden floorboards. I looked around the empty house I had nothing really, an overly large duffle bag and a patchwork satchel I've had since the sixties and have literally been 'patching' to fix its holes. And a golden ring around my neck.

I walked down the two steps into the atrium and sat at the piano to play Debussy's Claire de Lune. The golden oak of the piano's varnished reflected the orange glow of the fire as I lift the bar, my hands skimmed the white and black keys. I sat there in silence. Thinking of tomorrow, thinking I ought to play something, thinking I ought to have more things, thinking I was hungry. Seems all I ever do lately is think, it's exhausting.

First days of school are the worst even when you know what is going to happen.


	2. Chapter 2

The Abyss:

**-Flash-back**-

"You shouldn't be here." The voice came towards me like cracking leather. "It'll only make it harder to move on." Dropping to a whisper the gravel of the voice enveloped my eardrums.

"Do tell me how one _moves_ on from such a trauma." My eyelashes blinked, the sharply out of place pale green of their iris' sliding to the worn-leather clad figure. The bulking man simply stared, down at me for he had an imposing seven inches on my rather pathetic five-three frame. "I would not matter I assure Keron if I watch my parents burn or read of it tomorrow. One simply does not move on from such things and in such cases I fear time will not heal."

"Your parents didn't want you to be here." The newly turned vampire whispered gently. The men who sat on the council that had convicted my parents lit the marsh at the base of the wooden triangle. My mother watched my father who watched her eyes, my eyes. It is the only thing I'll have left of her after tonight. The frames seemed to crawl up their skin dancing along the flesh, I wished I'd cry, my eyes were aching for it, burning from the heat of the flames yet I stood seemingly impassive. It did not take long for the flames to consume my parents, perhaps a matter a minutes and from that a matter of more minutes before their nerve cells died and the screaming whined as brief bouts of numbness set in.

My mother had always told me having the gifts of empathy and visions were rare in a young witch, acquired through training not whim. She berated me just yesterday for cursing the pain my visions brought with them and told me "Special girls have not the luxury to whine like hand-maidens to a queen's servants." I don't think she'll hold it against me if I curse my empathic gift after this.

I turned to look at Keron; he was quite handsome made more so in the light of approaching dawn, with fashionable shoulder-length auburn hair that took on a soft shine in the red haze of the fire. He was to be my bet rowed not three weeks ago until Aro showed in our village and took Keron soft golden eyes from me. "Would I not have already been here? Have I not already seen this? I was the one we begged them to flee yesterday."

His hand was ice on my shoulder making me aware of just how far the heat was traveling through the crowd "I am so-

"Don't. You've done nothing to harbor guilt. You've always been there even when I say I don't want you." I vaguely recalled a passage from the Iliad that told of how long it took Achilles to burn Pericles and felt like weeping again, nearly two days for a body to burn.

**-Flashback ends**-

When I was seventeen a vampire named Aro came to me and said "All that angry in such a pretty package." I had never liked the man. He gave me immortality on the basis his new toy would allow this anger to be manipulated by him. "A waste; what an intriguing waste you are." His skin was like a papyrus scroll as his forefinger danced along my freckled checks. Anything that was not a vampire was a waste to Aro. Since he has tried to kill me five times.

Luckily or unluckily, depending on your stance of superior beings, fire seems to dislike me as much as it loved my parents. See, Aro when he turned me he thought the transition would destroy the witch in me, his logic "You cannot be dead yet connect with the living." You'd think for his age he'd be more on the wise side. However, I had stopped drawing energy from natural things long since Aro had found me, dark witches draw from the dead, induce death to capture the power of a departing soul. In essence, a dark witch is to a light the way vampires are to humans, superior.

When I took Aro's blood, the darkness inside me, its aura devoured it, it was unnatural, "an unprepared for delight" Aro had thusly labeled me, I'd labeled myself an abomination. When no ability developed in six months Aro grew angry, he was unsatisfied that I'd lost empathy and my visions, Aro coveted seers. I was thrust to the bottom ranks of his guard, his experiment gone wrong; suddenly he did not mind so much calling me an abomination. It would be later, saving his life that we realized what my dark aura had be molded into by his blood.

I could always sense power, however Aro is more of the brute-force type rather than the lie-in-wait-build-forces Bismarck ideal so he disregarded the only ability he imagined I had until news came of a Texas woman who was not simply building an army of vampires but hand-picking the people she turned based solely on the persons character and what she hoped it would grow into. The idea enthralled Aro and I was immediately displaced me to the far-corners of the earth in search of what I like to call his 'A-Team'. I was given the "Use the utmost force possible." Speak and shipped away like a petulant child. When correspondence reached Aro that the only sorts of people I was finding ones unwilling to turn and ones of no importance to turn, he turned on me. Sent his son with to deliver the message that if I were no to return with Aro's 'superior force of superior beings' I would not be allowed to return at all. To ensure I kept searching his son, like the ever imposing great-hulk of a man that he is would follow me like shadows at dawn to every isle, countryside, and luminescence city the world offered us.

Astor never tired of following his fathers demands and I never tired of reminding me I hated them. We returned to the Volturi 'A-Team' in tow like fine, little wound up soldiers and once again I was removed to the farthest corners of Aro's estate, his only recognition of my success being that of "I don't suppose you happened upon another ability yourself while in search of you 'auras'." I hadn't and he hadn't bothered to care. I was his greatest failure. And so subjected to far harsher training as Astor was for being his son, we trained – if you can loosely call torture training – and further trained and were further trained into Aro's personal assassins dispatched across the globe for decades 'taking-care' of the unwanted-s Aro's paranoia suspected were a threat to him.

It was in the muck, piss, and feces of a muggy Texas that I discovered why my dark aura was drawn to the darkness in people. A man named Jasper Hale was found in the woman's Texas holding an empathe my skin tingled at the very notion of it. I hated him, still am not fond of the man who had the ability I had longer possessed. In familiarity my dark maroon aura surged toward his light yellow and in the same way I'd take in souls for power as witch, I took in his aura. I had been desperate to feel the aura of an empathe in hopes I might be able to feel another's emotion through this scarred man. What he gave me – and Aro – was so much more for I could feel his emotions, his rage, thirst, need to survive, but I also felt everyone's despair around me, the dying's pain, the survivor's guilt, the fury of the battle, the sorrow of its aftermath. I could pin-point a person and block out the rest, I could feel again, yet my elation soon faded when I realized why I'd first been so happy to get rid of the curse, for I could feel again. Everything, everyone pulsed with emotion, they dripped from people were saturated in it and it was unbearable all over again. I hoped it would fade, that once my aura left Jasper's presence his curse would claim him alone again, yet returning to Aro's guard I realized the empathy would not fade, it clung to me like leeches and I soon feel into a deep abbess of madness. One Aro would spend years dragging me up from.

To this day he still flinches when he sees the flickering of madness in the green of my eyes for apparently when you drink of a vampire your eyes revert to their former human coloring. Abomination, the hell I wasn't.


	3. Chapter 3

High Schoolin' Em:

"Your always going to be the new kid somewhere." I mumble to myself as I stare at the bathroom mirror reflecting the pale green of my eyes, pockets of red like glitter line the outer iris's, normally it's a rose color, which means what my throat is already screaming at me. _Hunger._ A vision flutters through my mind, confusing the reality of myself in a mirror with the one I see arriving late to her first class, the students snicker as the teacher glowers from his place of instruction gives me a once over sign a pink paper with a red sharpie _Late_ tosses back to me with a grimace and says "Tardiness is a flaw, tell the class who you are." _Oh god, does he rhyme only when he's irritated or is it going to be a year of continuous sonnet lectures?_ Is the only thing that flutters into my mind like an echo before the vision fades.

I leave the bathroom of my claw-footed tube, thinking again how I miss sleep to an extreme degree. I dress in a white V-neck T-shirt, dark blue skinny jeans, dirty ankle converse that's fabric is ripping ever slowly, and a black worn leather jacket. Heading down from the loft I remember I don't have a car, and sigh the ever impracticalities of blinking. Glancing back at the roman chateau I snatch my patchwork bag, hock it around my shoulder and slink out just as the door swing open, shut and locks itself. I'd have to walk home, are at least walk half the way before 'blinking' to keep up appearances.

When I actually do reach Forks High School I am damp from the layer of mist I acquired and flushed from both hiking out of the woods and my morning rabbit. I have sunk low, feeding on animals, low to an extreme degree. And I swear I hear him, Aro in my mind chuckling, his voice like dripping false homemade honey _Could not even spare the time to visit the bank, always the humanitarian. _

People stare as I enter the parking lot, but what does a girl expect when she walks out of the woods damp, flushed and in broad-daylight. Outrageousness, this, this whole walking two miles through the woods and back each day was not working. Note to self: _buy a freaking car._ My mind glitches at the suggestion; _with what money?_ If I used my accounts Aro would be able to find me, seeing as how I was on his 'payroll' they routing numbers were set up through him and thusly can be traced by his goons as I am found of calling them as I am no longer one of them.

Trudging through the parking lot – and believe me I do mean trudging what with the pothole of mud I managed not to avoid while I was avoiding a pothole of water, still clinging half the forest to the bottom of my chucks – I ignore the _is she serious?_ Looks and make a beeline to the office. Got to get that pink paper my vision thrust upon me somehow.

When I do manage to get to the office I have barely enough in me to dimple at the stout lady reading to ever-amusing teen novel _Vampire Dairies_. I open my mouth to give her a name or at least get her to look up at me through her crystalized cat-eye glasses. "Yes Isabella Swan, welcome to Forks here's your map and classes, get this signed by all your teachers then bring it back after school okay." I always forget how much a human can say between gulps of air. I am thrust three papers, given the universal _shoo, shoo_ sign from this lady and still she has yet to look up from her book. Vaguely impressive.

I twist and pivot out of the office. Making my way the first blocking of classes, yet I run into something looking over the map I was handed. When I look up to glower at whatever door I must have smacked into as if it is the doors fault for not having moved out of my way I find it is not a something I run into but a someone, a someone that felt very much like a wall.

"Thanks a lot." I say to a grey clothed chest, for that is all I can mange to see without tilting my head up.

"You ran into me." The great booming voice is amused.

I glare into his face, an asymmetrical kind childlike face "And what you just didn't notice a girl wandering like a puppy, a side-step would have been nice. Your like a freaking stone wall."

"You didn't even flinch."

That's beside the point. "I have a high pain threshold." I say through clenched teeth and narrowed eyes, _annoying this man-child is annoying._

His eyes narrow, there is a calculating gaze about him for a moment and that's when I realize, he felt like stone because he is stone.

_A vampire, in Forks, seriously? I mean, seriously? A break cannot be caught._

Many years of avoiding my feelings has allowed only the merely arching of my eyebrows in surprise. A bell tolls, like a great old medieval church _bong_ thrice and I flinch each time, for its what they ought to of, but did not ring for my parents so many years ago. "Well thanks for making me late you big lummox."

His golden animal-eating eyes widen as he lets out the loudest laugh on the entire earth "I haven't heard someone use that word in a long time."

Wonderful. "Yes, well I'm still late." I step around him and double-time it to my first blocking.

Making it to my first class is not the problem it is what happens when I step inside the class. The door cries from rusty un-oiled hinges so sound I feel as if my eardrums will burst, the teacher glowers down at me as I mumble and apology and take an empty seat, unfortunately smack in the front row, in front of his desk. He forgets all about me, rhyming his way through all the poets, play-writes, and fictional novellas we will be studying, sleeping, and eating this year.

I am halfway through my class when I find the crumbled pink-paper I'm to return to the stout vampire-loving lady in the front office and nearly blanch. There is a decidedly absence of _Late_ to be found in the first blocking.

_Well that's new._

The bell tolls. Trice, I wish this school would be like every other school and adopt a _ding-dong_ doorbell as a change for next block.

A boy leans over from the desk next to be as I gather the miniature-notepad, gel pen and Chapstick from my desk to say "Hey I'm Eric."

Stuffing the things into my bag I glance at him, he has black greasy hair and a too long face to fit his too small nose that hold is outdated glasses. I feel overtly bad for this boy. "Hey." Comes my voice like dripping melted honey sweetly making Eric blush. Great another admirer like I needed that.

"So your new here." He says, trying to make conversation while I make my way to the door.

"Yeah, from Colorado." I give him a slight closed-lip smile, the blood pulses to his cheeks my throat enflames. _Goddamn Aro and his rightness. _Yes I just turned that into a verb, so what.

"Oh that's cool so are you enjoying Forks?"

"I enjoy that it's small." There's not much else to enjoy, expect for the absence of walking-blood-bags.

"I don't think I have ever herd that before. Why?"

"I can't in trouble in small-towns." His face looks to be fighting between paling and flushing to color of a tomato "It also reminds me of home." The word fly from my mouth and I nearly gasp wishing I could snatch them back. Eric opens his mouth to ask a follow-up question, _act quickly you dolt._ "Sorry I don't want to be to another class, see you around." I take to the stairs for my second blocking of classes two at a time and curse myself for I have arrived late to my second class.

However the blockings that lead up to lunch are as much of a blur as the lectures each teacher gave. By forth class I am tired of listening, feeling every damned teenage lusting after each other, tired of the fire in my throat, and so annoyed that I cannot like the boy next to me nap through this day. When the bell dongs again I wince and stand, walk towards the doors of the cafeteria and stop.

My eyes slide to the far corner table pushed to the left back wall four vampires sit a chit-chat like they are brothers and sisters. It is odd. _You are staring to long, gawking like a deer._ Newborn – no, can't be. Human-eaters attending high school, why?

_Why do you? _I dislike how my subconscious has taken on the voice of Aro it is rather off-putting.

My eyes bead into them scanning, calculating, and pelting them with my need to know more. Are they here for me? – Can't be. Someone nudges into me, I don't move an inch, someone calls my name and I barely need to glance away to know its Eric. "So you knock into people, don't apologize and now I find you are a stare-r too." The great lummox grins a white toothy thing then to my horror _tsks _"Unbecoming."

The group of vampires have now turned they're attention onto me, or rather us. I meet the giant man's golden eyes he looks a bit like Keron if Keron would have ever cut his hair short. A sharp pain pierces my heart redirecting my train of thought I dimple at this man "I wouldn't have had to stare if one of them had looked at me."

His eyes widen, he smiles and again to my complete horror tosses one of his meaty arms over my shoulders "Bold one you are." He steers me toward the table of vampires, I glance o rather openly begin my staring contest, locking eyes with none other than Jasper Hale. I stop mid-movement, yet am dragged unwillingly towards the table I oughtn't have stared at. Jasper Hale is an animal-eater. Not possible. He is also one of the animal-eaters Aro dislikes. I am torn for a moment in my complete annoyance, what was the point of having visions if they didn't keep things like this from happening. I contemplate moving, all the while my feet takes steps towards the farthest table from me

"You have got to be kidding me." I mumble.


	4. Chapter 4

Of Neanderthal's and Old Friends:

I had just made my way into the forest, was heaving a sigh and launching my satchel further onto my right shoulder whilst attempting the dreadful situation of loitering around ten pounds of books when I heard it. Someone was coming.

The problem wasn't so much the weight of the books as it was my lack of limbs. I mean honestly seven textbooks? That just seemed dramatically excessive. How is one to be expected to carry these monstrosities?

The person I realized – whomever it was – was tracking me, had caught my scent and was latched onto it. Waiting, watching, studying me the way Aro use to; coincidentally this action also seemed excessive.

"Stalking people is rude, not to mention obscenely creepy." The wind shifted, bitter cold spread up the length of my spine. The vampire had yet to acknowledge I'd spoken to him, the wind brought his scent to me, like cinnamon and soap he smelled.

Irritation flared, I should have seen this. _What was wrong with my visions?_

My steps faltered, I dodged a stray overgrown root covered with slick moss and debated what was to happen if the man never emerged. Would he leave before I made it to the ridge that dropped down into my clearing? – Highly unlikely. Would he ever show himself? – Doubtful.

I wondered briefly of his stamina. And far he'd be willing to track me, if he was anything like Demteri, he'd follow me to the ends of the earth, however their were very few people like Demteri.

I stopped, shifted the books in my arms, two in one hand, three in the other, two stuffed into my bag. I felt dreadfully tired, which is in itself an oddity for vampires. _What was happening to me? _Could vampires catch the plague?

The man finally dropped from a tree behind me, much like the way cats drop from dressers onto carpeted floors. Knees bent for impact absorption, eyes narrowed, nostrils flaring. The first thing that latched onto was the dreadful familiarity of his aura, bright yellow like the sun. _I could bask in it all day. _

My head gave a curt nod, legs tense to spring into a defensive attack, my mind searched for the future's that could play out between us: nothing. "Jasper, so good to see you made it out of Texas." My arms went limp in exhaustion, the books clattered in a heap, eyes wide I stared at the place where they landed. Jasper flinched, I blinked both of us entrapped in the haphazard sprawl of textbooks.

"Why are you here?" His voice was icy cool, just as I'd remembered it being. The man never trusted anyone, always on guard, always weary.

I sat, ignoring the dampness my jeans were absorbing and crossed my legs; my fingers dragged each textbook next to me stacking them in net piles of two and three. "I think I might have contracted the plague." His shock tasted like orange honey, too sweet, too raw.

"What?"

I looked into his golden eyes a smile curling at my lips "Can vampire's contract the plague, never heard of such a thing before, seems doubtful." My eyes flickered to the palms of my up-turned hands; I suppressed the urge to shiver as the air whipped around my hair. It was as if I was regressing, becoming human, feeling as humans felt. The cold, the fatigue, it was all rather unsettling. "Maybe it's a form of bioterrorism."

"Why are you here Bella?" His fingers snapped in front of my face in an attempt to draw my attention to him again. I noticed for the first time just how close he had gotten to me, his khaki clothed knees inches away from touching mine.

"I just adore small towns." I gave a cheeky dimpled smile, blinking up in false innocence at him.

He glowered leaned his face closer to mine, I leaned away as far as the bark of the tree would allow. "You taste like lies, bitter nutmeg."

"And you taste like honey but you didn't hear me complaining so rudely." My eyes sparkled in amusement, he blinked noticing their color.

"That's new."

"I'm special." My shoulders gave a shrug, I struggled to contain my emotions, I hated being around an empathe.

"That's impossible." His eyes narrowed his curiosity filling my mouth with salt water.

"That's rude." My elbows shoved around the damp earth, straightening my back, putting four glorious inches between this intrusive vampire and me. "Have you never learned of personal space boundaries?"

"Tell me what you are doing in Forks, the Cullen's follow the rules." His nerves tasted of fish; I hated fish.

"Aro doesn't like them." Jasper didn't seem surprised by this.

"Aro cannot act without a reason." I had a feeling he was saying this more for his benefit than mine.

"Aro can do whatever he wants Jasper." A feeling of sympathy leaked through me and into him "He does not need a reason."

He blinked unsure of himself, unsure if I had just threatened or warned him. "So you're here to kill us, all alone, its one against five."

Did he not remember Texas at all? "I'm here to participate in an authentic adolescent experience."

He blinked again, he seemed to have assimilated well into the human culture, shifting his back legs ever so often even though no fatigue claimed him like it claimed me. "You're here to go to school?"

I wasn't sure if he'd meant it to be a question, but it sounded like it, so I answered, "Yes Jasper, I'm here for high school hence the books." I glared down at the books, which were fast becoming the bane of my existence.

"Why?"

"Has anybody told you, you ask too many questions, because you do." I brushed clinging wet leaves and dirt off of my honors Chemistry handbook.

"And you're a dismissive ignorer of questions." His anger was something of beauty bright red, swirling so greatly it felt alive in its rhythmic pulsing of crystalized sugar particles.

"I'm here because I want to be here." I thrust myself onto my feet, if a little unsteadily – Jasper unfortunately noticed the bout with a mixture of curiosity and shock – the rigid swiftness of the movement cause him to leap away from me or be smacked in the head with my forehead. "Is that so hard to imagine, that I'd want to live a normal life."

"And Aro allowed this." His doubt told me he didn't believe Aro would have ever agreed to such a thing.

He was right of course, but its not like I'd admit that and its not as if any of the hated animal-eaters would call Aro without being forced to. "How else would I be here?" Neither a lie nor omission. His annoyance flared in his desperate attempt to get a reading on my emotions, which were thrumming a steady pulse of neutral content into him.

"Just school." He didn't sound appeased.

I agreed with the shake of my head, "Just school." He returned my nod curtly and was gone.

_He could have at least offered to walk me home, the Neanderthal._


	5. Chapter 5

Regression or Influenza:

I'd never been one to whine much. Complaining of your situation only prolonged your inability to take action. And I was a large supporter of taking action. I even enjoyed thrusting verbs at people, like pelting pebbles onto a still lake just so I could see how the ripples would effect their cause. Like pebbles, though one must be careful not to sink.

I did a lot of sinking.

Lately it seems as if I am physically ill, upon returning home I crawling up the stairs, into my bed and slept – actually fell asleep. If that's not off-putting enough animal blood was doing nothing the state the thirst currently lodged in the back of my throat.

I felt like I would very soon begin to lose my mind. There were moments when I swear I feel it; could imagine the chipping away of my sanity. It progressed so achingly slowly, one layer of old wood fell, the metal supporter beams rusted and flecked off in the wind, wallpapered ceilings of my mind peeled and slide away. All pulling me towards mental instability that had someone offered, I would have taken the lobotomy.

Being absent from school for three days apparently had caught the attention of the attendance office. A tight-laced woman called everyday and left the same message of my answering machine, each one increasingly more hostile than its predecessor. "Isabella Swan, has been reported in our records as having had an unexcused absence today. Please call back the attendance office with a notice of excuse. Thank you."

However today I received a call in the morning, which awoke me in the most brutish of ways. "Isabella Swan must attend school today or her guardian will be expected to show up for a meeting with both a Social Services agent and the principle to disconcert her whereabouts. Should Isabella return today to school she must have a signed permission statement and/or doctors note to excuse her absentees."

A gravelly groan escaped my throat; the thrill of her voice had made my head begin throb again, unpleasantly send shockwaves into my brain. I had planned on sleeping until I could longer. This lady was seriously hampering that goal.

My feet swung left, feather pillows flopped onto the wooden floor, cotton sheets slipped after them. I pressed my toes into slippers and dragged my body forcibly towards a claw-footed copper tub. The running water soothed my headache, its scolding water soothed my bones. If this was regression, if I was turning into a human somehow, I hated every moment of it. _Is this what the influenza feels like?_ God, people went through this every year.

Fifteen or perhaps forty minutes later, I was dressed in old ripped jeans, a baggy Rolling Stones T-Shirt, my chunks, and a pink soft hoodie. Dragging my body towards the front door I was immensely thankful that human-appearance necessity had demanded I buy that white rusting VW Bug. "Reverse, first gear, third." I mentally relayed every action I did as I pulled away from the towering Roman house and onto the gravel road. Taking a left instead of right I turned onto the highway and skirted the town limits until the red lettered sign displayed _Forks Community Hospital. _

Parking hastily in the back next to the blood donor drop-off point, I squeaked my way through the cracked back door that yellow letters branded "Off Limits" and snatched up a cooler full of O-negative a strapping delivery boy named Mattie had so kindly been compelled to leave for me.

After the first pint I felt my cheeks flush with warmth, my aura revolted as it always did, the witch in me was starved, had been starved since the day I turned. A dull ache formed in my chest, a need to connect to the earth sang to me, I hadn't felt the need to preform light magic since my parents had died but right now I felt it I didn't I'd fall into an abyss.

Calling upon elemental spirits never worked though so I didn't bother with indulging the out-of-place desire. _The dead cannot connect with the living. _Shoving the feeling of be hollow deep down inside of me I pulled onto the highway, already having missed first period, my mind kept telling me there would be no harm in going home, going to bed.

Ignoring my dirt road turn off I sped the Bug up hitting 86 and prayed cops were inclined to be as lazy as I was this morning. Fortunately, luck was on apparently on my side today because I made it to Forks High and into a parking place next to a silver Volvo, with twenty minutes to spare until second period. Checking my reflection in the car rear-view mirror I winced, it was not my best look, being all pasty and grey.

Stepping out of the Betsy, as I had taken to referring to the VW by I realized I'd left all those horrid textbooks in the foray of my house. Grimacing, I lifted my chin in defiance and strode towards the attendance office, there was not a chance in all of Dante's hells that I was going back to get them now. Just thinking about it made my body ache.

The stout woman who'd greeted me on my first day was still reading the very same book, however this time when I emerged from the mist of outside she did look up. Taking her time to regard me I realized it was her who had been calling me, her annoyance ate away at me than slowly gave way to sympathy. I tossed her a scrap of scribbled on paper I'd ripped from my notebook while waiting at a red light to turn onto the highway, she glanced over the words taking more care with the signature. Her eyes flickered finally up to me, she typed something into an ancient looking monitor, gave me a nod and a piece of yellow paper stamped 'Readmit'. "Get that signed by your teachers and this time take care to _return_ it her at the end of the day." Her cat-eyeglasses slide down the bridge of her nose as she glared sternly at me, I gave a weak nod and turned, smacking right into a wall of human flesh again.

_Why did the world seem to hate me?_


	6. Chapter 6

The Taste of Candy and Strawberries:

This time when our bodies connected I went down, down hard. My body crumpled underneath my legs unnaturally and for a while it was all I could do to simply lie there. The linoleum floor was cool against my back as I stared up at a popcorn ceiling that would most likely test positive for asbestos.

The man-wall I'd walked into leaned over me golden eyes apprehensive, wry, and uncertain mangling his model-like face in cloudiness while blocking my view of the ceiling. When his eyes locked into mine electric currents shock through my veins, like consuming an entire glass of whiskey straight without its customary rocks. I repressed the urge to omit the snarl currently lingering at the base of my throat. It was unnerving, off-kilter-ing, and altogether all sorts of awkward. I couldn't decide whether the volts of electricity were a good or bad thing, torture Jane-style or magnetically stimulating.

So when in doubt – I say – be snarky (or do nothing). "What the heck buddy?" My mind finally caught up with the shock of being impelled onto the floor, elbows slid under the back of my ribs to give me a lift in thrusting myself onto my feet. I regarded him, his handsome old-fashioned face, his golden animal-eater eyes, his lanky build and sharp jawline. Everything was angular, all sharp edges and symmetry – unnatural. Like a Michelangelo carving.

He'd stepped right out of the turn of the 20th century and – _ran smack into you._ Aro's voice reminded me. I coughed to hide the embarrassment welling inside my chest, I'd been staring at him for a while I'd realized, far too long. The stout lady fluttered in between us looking, like a newly freed butterfly hovering around the edge of its first flower sighting, her in drawn expression telling me she'd very much like to help me while also looking as if she did not want to be any nearer to me than necessary given my sickly appearance.

"You walked into me." His face curled into a pouty smirk.

"God do all you Cullen's say that." I brush off invisible dust particles, flinging my feet into motion. His anxiety was suffocating me, the stout vampire-loving lady's pity was bringing on a headache in a record setting roll of thudding pulses and this office suddenly seemed too hot and far too small to hold three bodies.

"What are you?" His body shifted to block my exit; it was then that I realized he'd been watching me as well. _Not watching little malefica, studying._ Even thousands of miles away Aro still managed to, like flipping a light switch, revert me into that shy to-be married maiden he'd first encountered.

The animal-eaters contorted face was intent on me, Aro – my subconscious – had been right he was studying me. His seriousness pushed the air from my lungs in short bursts, I did not want him any closer to me than necessary. Yet his face leaned closer critically examining my eyes the way government hired physicians would examine an alien species. This man's golden eyes sought answers from my green iris' as if they held the missing link needed to decode the third partition of the Rosetta stone.

I blinked up at him because he had a good four inches on me – damned my petite frame – and laughed. He could not be serious? I could not be serious. We both were not being serious. Entertaining such ludicrous ideas. "Sure I'm fine, didn't just get hurled onto a hard floor or nothing." This time when he made a move to block me, I sidestepped and brushed by the opposite side of him, twirling around his too large shoulders en pointe.

I rushed, once outside to my second blocking of class breathing erratically, my feet moving too quickly. I reached to door to my honors Chem class, thrust it open and flinted over to the teacher as students filed in. After the paper was signed I took a seat in the middle of the class and slouched, the mist had turned to rain outside, which by the clouding of the windows I had no doubt when soon turn to sleet then freeze into hail. My headache felt like tiny gremlins were marching off to war inside my skull, and when Eric sat next to me my throat flared to life. _Wonderful._

I barely made it to lunch and nearly fainted at one point in English when a girl named Jessica leaned in close to me, dropping her whisper-thin name into my ear, her perfume smelled like candy and strawberries, starkly sweet. Combined with her envy, nerves, and giddiness of getting to the new-girl before anyone else the perfume began to make _her_ seem like candy. Eric in our Calculus College-Prep class invited me to sit at his table with his friends and for the life of me I couldn't come up with an excuse not to sit with them. So here I was listening to Jessica tell another girl with glasses about which dresses were and were not in season.

My concentration slid every time one of them mentioned ruffles, the only thing keeping me upright was the constant flare of fire that seemed to be crawling its way up my throat at a glacier pace. More so were my nerves I felt strung-out, shifting between being on-guard and trying to get back on guard, this was made none the more easier when they showed up. Feeling their eyes staring into the back of my head constantly, waiting for a slip up on my part that could give them a reason to launch themselves at me had me feeling like a tweaker, hyped from a cocaine burn-out. The entire experience was nauseating.

"Edward Cullen has been staring at you for the last half-hour." Jessica's jealousy enhanced the smell of her blood making her blood taste like bittersweet chocolate to my starved taste buds.

"Lovely." My right palm raised my chin a half of an inch higher.

"They're all staring her Jess." I really ought to remember her name.

"What do you think they want?"

Nothing good. Their emotions were screaming at my aura, thrumming in my veins, giving me a small sense of whiplash. The Cullen's wanted me gone. "Maybe a date." Jessica looked mortified by the thought of it only when I burst of laughing did her jealousy fizzle like dry soda. "They probably just want to know who the new girl is." I said threw a stifled yawn.

"Well _everyone_ wants to know that." Jessica practically gushed the words out, her pride over having swooped in on me first sweetening the effects her candy-perfume had on her blood.

"Good thing you found me when you did then or I'd probably be enduring alone." I rolled my eyes mentally, repressing the urge to flinch as pangs of her giddiness struck out against me heart as if they wanted to personally send me into cardiac arrest.

"So Bella where are you from?" I glanced at the blond-boy-man, his hair was just a hint lighter than Edward's eyes, and his tan skin too out of place in a place that received a complete total of perhaps fifty sunny days a year.

"Arizona." I made it a point to keep conversations with this puppy-boy-man on the short and sweet side so as to not spark any raised levels of his already rolling lust clouds.

"Cool, cool. Not a fan of the sun I'm guessing." His left hand waved unsubtly in front of my face before flopping onto the table where it stayed directly in the middle approximately three inches away from the hand that was currently swirling a water bottle in a circle motion as if by mimicking the away I handled my whiskey would spontaneously change the water into it.

"I burn, tan, and then re-pale. Totally unfair cycle of my life." The table laughed, I did my best to ignore my inflamed throat. I didn't understand why I was hungry, I'd eaten enough to last a good two weeks this morning, the outer portions of my eyes were still tinged red from the effects, which meant the blood was still in my system. Which left me completely clueless as to why I was as hungry as a newborn.

My whispered name perked up my purposefully dulled senses. _"Maybe she's not a vampire anymore."_ The voice was light and airy, the way a child's is before they reached puberty.

"_That's not possible Alice."_ I recognized Edward's voice from this morning; his once velvet smooth tone had turned sharp against this Alice woman.

"_Then how do you explain it Edward."_ Her tone was mocking.

"_Well maybe if your visions weren't off their rocker lately."_ My head snapped round, I hadn't even noticed._ I hadn't even noticed?_ I glared at the table steadily, eyes sparking in concentration as I called upon their auras – nothing. I saw nothing. I hadn't even realized I was no longer seeing auras. I had always seen them. Always. And now not being able to see them gone felt like someone had chopped off and burned my arm.

The Cullen's stared back at me startled at my blatant study of them. There were two women among the five vampires, one was stunning, the most beautiful thing I've seen in all my years. Blond silk for hair, three shades lighter than her golden-flecked eyes, red full pouty lips glossed to kissable perfect and a slim-curvy body that screamed Victoria secret model like a wailing Banshee. The other was…well a pixie. Short cropped and spiky hair, dancer claves, tiny waist, and all-knowing eyes. I wished I'd taken the time to actually study the files Aro demanded I memorize back in Volterra, I could see the burgundy red manila folder now, lying in the three-story library unopened, untouched, and dusty.

I hated when Aro was right. Seriously, I made it a point to continuously go out of my way to prove him wrong. It was a life-long dedication I was currently failing at.


End file.
